Kitchen Garden Forum

The challenges farming now faces are the increasing scarcity and price of oil and the need to cut greenhouse gases emissions by 80% before 2050. Rather than burning up oil and gas for the agrochemicals on which GM crops are reliant, the future of food production lies in systems that fertilise crops by taking nitrogen from the air using energy from the sun, as in organic farming.

Hmm

One of the problems in Africa is not food production but distribution. It can be grown in volume in one place but food losses and waste means it does not get to the users..

And how do we get it there? transport.
And transport needs: oil.

The usual blend of lies and half truths tries to blame fertilisers for oil usage. Bull excrement.

Most fuel is used by transport .. Worldwide. And heating. If fertiliser use was 100% stopped tomorrow it would make zero difference to global warming.

But then, typical to divert attention from facts..

Aren't countries with lots of sunshine trying to power transport etc. by solar power. Probably a while off, but certainly a possibility

madasafish wrote:The usual blend of lies and half truths tries to blame fertilisers for oil usage. Bull excrement.

If you're interested in facts ...

Well it is mostly gas, rather than oil, to make ammonia.

For nitrate fetiliser (Helsel, ZR. Energy in Farm production vol6 1992)

Production 69530 kJ/kg
Package 2600 kJ/kg
Transport 4500 kJ/kg
Apply 1600 kJ/kg

If you prefer to think about energy in kW hours, 1 kW Hr = 3600 kJ.

So by far the biggest energy use is in manufacture, and it is just shy of 20kW hour per kilo of fertiliser. Which is about the amount of electricity the average UK household uses in a day and a half, for comparison.

Historicaly industrial scale sources of fertilizer were caves and remote islands, where the seabird or bat guano was dug out and then shipped around the world.